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It has been a long road to release but it seems now the release is just in sight! Robot Entertainment have announced that Orcs Must Die! Unchained will be launching with patch 2.0 to the masses on April 19th 2017! That’s less than two weeks away! The game will be launching on Steam first with a PS4 release to follow later this year.

There are more goodies up Robot’s sleeve too. The OMDU launch will also feature a brand new multiplayer mode called Sabotage!

This mode sees two teams playing on the same map however, they don’t play together per se, instead they play in another dimension. Both teams main objective is to defend their rift as per normal but additionally they can make life hard work for the other team by choosing and sending in minions into the opposing teams waves. Consumables can also be used as well such as causing a mana drain or minion speed buffs for example. There a bigger minion cards like bosses and powerful spells at players disposal as well. The key to victory will be the teams that communicate well and harmonise the minions and spells that are being sent in to the opposing teams waves.

This new mode tailors to new and advanced players, there is a new tactical map which can be used to see the activity of the other dimension to plot further for the best ways to out-wit them.

Video

To help explain Sabotage more, Nananea is on hand with a useful introduction video taking players through the new concept. Check it out below:

Sabotage is about head-to-head fun, its not a direct replacement for the now departed PvP mode. Speaking on the Orcs After Dark stream this week, designer Jerome Jones commented that this mode is designed to be light hearted fun in similar vain to games like Mario Kart. Where Mario Kart is an “elastic” racing game where players who fall behind gain bigger and better items, in Sabotage a similar effect will happen. Be sure to also check out the commentary on the stream below, but beware the audio issues with volume. I recommend pressing the button to skip the audio issues segment.

Not long now

With the release now less than two weeks away its time to get excited about OMDU becoming ready for the masses come April 19th. Tell your friends!

In case you missed out on last weeks Insider Access, it has recently been revealed that the next survival map destined for OMDU will be a welcome return of an old favourite – “The Baths” from the original Orcs Must Die! This was an early level from act 1 and the level is split in two. It was the level where the famous Wind Belt was introduced.

The level is now making a return in Orcs Must Die! Unchained as a smaller survival map aiming to bring back the feel of some of those smaller OMD maps from previous titles. The Baths has been given a visual overhaul for Unchained. Nananea has produced a 360 degree video so that you can explore how the level now looks in the spruced up new engine. Check it out below:

And for more details on the the level including the reasons for bringing it back, check out the Insider Access with artist Paul Slusser below for the inside info. The Baths is one of a number of new Survival maps coming to Unchained which will pay homage to the smaller style maps from earlier games. There are plenty of survival maps in the works to fill up the survival level list from levels 0-100. The goal is to have as many diverse levels in their as possible, both big and small.

What about Siege maps?

Players who are craving more Siege maps should not fear, there are siege maps in the works. In order to accommodate the 5v5 players these maps have to be larger and take closely into account game balance and neutral objectives, understandbly these maps take longer to create as a result. Rest assured there are bots in the studio working on Siege maps and content to be on the lookout for news on these soon.

Bloodspike is making a return to Orcs Must Die! Unchained in the next open beta patch. Bloodspike has long been on fans wishlist to make a return to OMDU following his removal at the end of closed beta phase 1. Having appeared in the most recent OMDU trailer he is now back in the fray following a comprehensive redesign.

Meals meals meals

They don’t call Bloodspike “The Brutal” for nothing, he has an interesting new passive ability which demonstrates his sheer brutality. He is able to attack and kill his own friendly minions, when he does he is able to consume them as delicious meals which can then be used to restore Bloodspikes HP. Think of it as sacrifices for the greater good. This sounds like an interesting mechanic and could be interesting in turning the tide of battle utilising Bloodspike to push instead of a sacrificed minion lost through his bloodhungry passive.

Another interesting mechanic surrounding sacrificing your own minions – he has another ability called “Bloodbath“. This melee attack makes up his secondary ability . The more enemies (or allies) that Bloodspike hits, the faster he can power up all of his other abilities. This works in a stacking system similar to Oziel’s souls. Bloodspike gains 8% per stack – up to +80% bonus damage. Unlike Oziel however, Bloodspike’s stacks timeout over time so players need to keep an eye on his stacks to make sure they are getting the best out of Bloodspike at any one time, or if he needs a break to feast on some of those delicious meals.

Powerful Attacks

As a melee hero, Bloodspike wields two mighty axes, delightfully named ‘Bridget’ and ‘Delilah’ take turns as they can be used to slay enemy (or indeed, friendly) minions. Each hit that these axes makes also serves a secondary purpose – lowering the cool-down an Bloodspike’s E ability – Maiming Blow - A double-axe melee attack that deals damage and slows proportional to enemy hero HPs. Low HP heroes are dealt high damage but slightly slowed. High HP heroes are dealt low damage and significantly slowed.

Inspirational

The Unchained can always do with a little bit of encouragement on the battle field – especially those Orcs. Luckily with Bloodspike around confidence is greatly boosted via his Inspiring Frenzy shift ability. When pressed Bloodspike calls out to his minions in close proximity, empowering them with increased attack and movement speed and temporary HPs.

If this isn’t enough to wet your brutality appetite you can also check out Nananea’s excellent hero overview video below to see Bloodspike in action!

Hero Overview Video

You can also find out more about the design process for Bloodspike by reading Paul Hellquist’s blog on the Orcs Must Die! website via the link below which makes for interesting reading.

Have you been following closely on Facebook and Twitter? If so you may have spotted some very interesting new “Ask Me Anything” features on Reddit. Known as AMA’s players have been asking questions directly to the bots at the studio. Taking part so far has included:

AMA Highlights

You’ve worked in a community position across several different companies in the video game industry for quite awhile now.

What are some of the differences you’ve seen in Community Management and Marketing over the years?

Do you think it’s easier to with social media as popular as it is or does it make some aspects of marketing and community management harder?

Justin responds:

The largest change has been that Community Management has split up into several disciplines these days. A CM used to have to kind of be a jack of all trades and manage every conversation that was happening online. These days, it’s all split up. There are social media managers, forum moderators, community feature developers, website developers, and so on. More specializations.

As for whether or not it’s easier with social media, it depends on your goals I think. SM has obviously made it easier than ever to connect with a broad range of people at virtually the click of a button. But it’s also inserted ridiculous amounts of noise into word-of-mouth marketing. It can be REALLY hard to stand out in all that noise if you’re not clever.

What was the most difficult or hardest part of the production of OMDU that you never experienced with any game you worked on previous?

Chris responds:

Oh man… OMDU is a giant game, in terms of all the different tech we use, and all the stuff we’re doing for the first time. Having to create a store, an entire networking service, a dashboard, along with a game is a lot to keep up with.

Probably the biggest challenge though is running a “live” game. In other words, while we have a version that is being played online, we’ve got at least one or two other versions of the game running at the office with new features, content, etc. that needs testing. Coordinating when those things “go live” to the public build, and keeping the public build up and running is a good healthy challenge for us. It’s fun .

The Steam ratings for the game are currently rather negative sadly, mostly due to the business model, not the game itself. Do you think the business model is good as it is currently or is there still some tweaking necessary?

Patrick responds:

You know going in that you’re going to take some negative feedback on Steam with a free to play business model. You hope that the game is good enough and the business model fair enough that those reviews became the minority. We probably don’t have it perfect today. But we’re listening to players very closely. In fact, there’s already a business model change being hot-fixed in today based on a constructively written Steam review. We’ll continue to watch closely and listen to players.

How well do you think OMDU going to do up against all the other free game out today? I know how hard it is for a games to succeed on a microtransaction platform.

Nananea responds:

I think there is a lot of stigma out there still about free-to-play games, but I feel like OMDU has plenty of gameplay mechanics to set it apart from the pack. The great thing about F2P is that anyone can download and play the game and make their own judgment on the game and that’s a very powerful thing!

What were the decisions that made you and the team to shift the OMD Franchise towards the MOBA Genre?

Patrick responds:

We didn’t set out to shift the franchise to the MOBA genre. For us, OMDU was a very logical progression of the franchise based on fan feedback. The first game was single player and fans were clamoring for co-op so we made OMD2. That led to feedback about bigger multiplayer and PvP. For us, we always imagined PvP as two OMD games pitted against one another. Of course, we knew not all OMD fans play PvP so that led us to making the Survival PvE mode. We really hope PvE appeals to the OMD fan that loves killing orcs with friends.

2016 is in full swing and we now have new closed beta hours for both NA and EU OMDU closed beta servers.

North America

The servers will now be open all weekend starting from Thursday evening at 6pm CT up until 10PM CT on Sunday. Plenty of time to get some games in for both testing and fun!

Europe

In the EU the servers are open from Thursday evening through to Sunday evening as well. Thats Thursdays from 5 PM (CET) untill Sundays at midnight (CET).

Twitch Streams

Plenty of Twitch streams will be taking place including ‘Meet Your Match‘ every Friday with your hostess with the mostess Nananea playing OMDU with the community. Plus Robot Entertainment will be continuing the popular ‘Insider Access‘ which gives us exclusive interviews with Robot staff talking all about OMDU and more. ‘Orcs After Dark‘ is also back every other Thursday where players can join Robot Entertainment staff for an evening of play. Every other week Nananea will take us back to a blast from the past with OMD1 and 2 gameplay with ‘Throwback Thursday‘.

Here is a summary of the line-up:

Showing on OrcsMustDie.tv

Show

Time

Tuesday - 3pm Central US

6:30pm – 8:30pm Central US

6:30pm – 8:30pm Central US

Showing on OrcsMustDieEU.tv

Gameforge Communications Manager FaTeReLLa is on hand throughout January with various streams. Here is the current line up:

Have you been keeping an eye on the OMDU Insider Access streams? If not watching live you can catch up by VOD on the official OMDU YouTube channel. This weeks Insider Access was very interesting. Community Manager, Justin Korthof (SixOkay) sat down with Mike Creasy (DangerMike) to talk about the new tutorial system. Poor Mike has yet again had to re-work the tutorial system with all the changes that have been made over the patches. He has been working on the tutorial system since August 2014 and has had to deal with many major gameplay changes since then.

The good news is that a new revised tutorial is coming together and its looking really awesome. On Insider Access we saw a 9 minute video taking us through the new tutorial for Survival mode with the video being produced by Nananea. The new tutorial is looking and sounding great with comprehensive voice over talk from Maximilian the War Mage and excellent visual cues. The new tutorial also teaches players good practice at setting up kill boxes so that newbies have a better steer on what to do on their early games and to help integrate into the community faster. If you haven’t already seen the Insider Access episode be sure to check out the video extract below!

Spoilers!

One of the added bonuses of seeing the new tutorial is we get to see some upcoming new OMDU features. If you are eagle eyed you can spot a number of new things. Here are some examples:

New Guardian Options

Looks like options to place different types of guardians is coming

Yarr! – New Boss

Any guesses on Captain Orc’s name?

There are some more hidden reveals in the video too if you take a look closely at minion armour, traps and some more bosses / minions. Check out the new Survival Tutorial video below which is coming in patch 2.6.

Following on from Nananea’s appointment to Robot’s Community team as chief Twitch streamer, Robot have now announced a raft of Twitch programming to keep fans engaged a whole six days of the week! Not only that but most days have two streams per day – a huge boost in programming!

The new fully comprehensive Twitch schedule features matchmaking game-play with “Meet your Match“, “Insider Access” where streams take place LIVE from Robot HQ with Q&A and interviews with the bots. “Developer League” sees Robots vs Robots as individual teams at the studio take to the battlefield against each other. A “Community Night” sees Nananea talking to folks from around the OMDU community. Finally, to top things off “Throwback Thursday” takes fans back to the fun times of OMD1 and 2 with Nananea demonstrating some of the most difficult fortresses and combinations.

When?

If all this exciting news wets your appetite you will no doubt be wondering when all of this excellent programming will be available. At REF we have updated the Twitch streams page with the full schedule. Conversions to your own timezone included! Plus you can always see which stream is coming up next by checking the “Upcoming Streams” box on the left hand menu on REF.